Open Journal Systems

Opening Speech

Abdallah Sfeir

Abstract

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends and colleagues, A couple of years ago the decoding of the human genome was completed. The number of human genes turned out to be one third of what was anticipated and it was also foundthat an infinitesimal part of this code differs between one person and another, irrespective of gender, race, ethnicity, and geographical location.1 This rather surprising discovery led many scientists to recognize that humans are much lesscoded than we initially thought, and that in itself may well be the secret behind intelligence and the development of mankind.